[time-nuts] UK standard frequencies - where?

David J Taylor david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk
Wed Oct 12 10:43:25 UTC 2011


> David,
>
> I'm 70km north of London and have used the French 162kHz high stability 
> signal as well as RWM (Moscow) on 4.996, 9.996 and 14.996MHz for 
> frequency measurement and calibration before I got my Thunderbolt. RWM 
> is particularly good because part of the schedule involves sending 
> continuous carrier, which I used with SpectrumLab to calibrate 
> transceivers - you simply use SSB, offset the transceiver by 1kHz to get 
> an audio tone and measure the error using the waterfall on SPLab.

Yes, I can get the RWM on 14.996 MHz - so that's an excellent HF start.

> The technique is prone to sound card errors but these can be quantified 
> and there are various tricks which can be used to minimise error, 
> probably better discussed by e-mail.

OK, but I'm probably OK for the moment.

> I'd be (pleasantly) surprised if local FM transmissions operated to 
> time-nuts levels of stability, but I can assure you that air traffic 
> transmitters are probably not the way to go. Air traffic transmissions 
> have 25kHz spacings but some allocations have multiple transmitters at 
> different sites all using the same channel, but frequency offset from 
> each other to give wider coverage - and of course, with the exception of 
> VOLMET and ATIS transmissions,  the signal is very intermittent.

Yes, it's been a bit hit-and-miss, and I suspect that all of the local 
transmitters were aligned by the same team, perhaps even the same 
instruments.  Quite close agreement, but are they correct?

> Your best bet would probably be to get hold of a Thunderbolt as I did, 
> you can also feed  the 10MHz output to a set of dividers if you have 
> test gear which can use external an external frequency reference - very 
> useful.
>
> Regards,
> David, Milton Keynes, UK  (G4IRQ)

Something like a T/B but using a pre-amped puck antenna would be ideal for 
here.

Many thanks for your help.

73,
David GM8ARV
-- 
SatSignal software - quality software written to your requirements
Web:  http://www.satsignal.eu
Email:  david-taylor at blueyonder.co.uk 




More information about the time-nuts mailing list